Chapter 21: Explosive Rumors and New Rivals

“It seems like kissing men is his drinking habit.”

At Woohyeong’s words, a moment of silence fell inside the radio booth.

Since the other members didn’t know what Jemin’s actual drinking habit was either, they seemed to genuinely believe Woohyeong’s words.

The DJ clapped and laughed.

“Hahaha.

That’s a shocking drinking habit.

Jemin, you must be overflowing with aegyo.

Are there any victims within the group?”

“I will give you a no comment.”

Eunhan looked at Jemin with an intrigued expression.

Then he wrote ‘Did you throw a tantrum at Woohyeong-hyung yesterday? lol’ on the corner of a piece of paper and held it up to Jemin.

Jemin scowled and shook his head.

Since Jemin couldn’t exactly say “No! My drinking habit is throwing up!”, he said something else to fix the situation.

“Since I don’t drink alcohol often, Nitis, please don’t worry too much! I just made a mistake once, but Woohyeong is teasing me too much.”

There was no way Woohyeong would do business gay performance, aka BGP, just to please the fans.

In the first place, it was clear that Woohyeong didn’t even know fans liked members skin-ship with each other.

If he found out, he was the type of guy who would physically distance himself from the members even more.

Which meant the intention behind those words was either to mess with Jemin or he just blurted out whatever came to mind without thinking much.

• ? What was HyungJem just now…? I’m so confused;

• Jeong Woohyeong isn’t even a guy who does BGP, why is he seriously acting like that?

Inside the radio booth, everyone laughed and brushed it off as a joke.

However, complete chaos broke out on the listener message board.

Monitoring the situation that had turned into a mess, Jemin’s face turned pale.

• Look at this, Jeong Woohyeong’s solo stans beat up HanJem, but in the end, it was because they wanted Yu Jemin as a daughter-in-law, what bullshit

• Why are you throwing a fit over your Jemin shaking his tail and kissing Woori-hyung?

• He didn’t say he kissed Jeong Woohyeong though? He said his drinking habit is kissing lol

• The other members look like it’s their first time hearing it though? It’s definitely something he did to Jeong Woohyeong lol

At the sudden explosive HyungJem content, a fierce spark of tension erupted between Jeong Woohyeong’s solo fandom and the HanJem RPS fandom.

Although Jemin couldn’t check due to being mid-broadcast, the situation was the same on other SNS platforms.

HanJemBigName @hanjemisrealgay

Jemni’s drinking habit is kissing, I want to see drunk gay HanJem

Eunhan-i can’t drink a single drop, but went to the drinking session forcibly because of Jemin-hyung. He was barely holding on with water, but meanwhile, hyung got completely wasted. He secretly bought chocolate milk and handed it to hyung, but hyung grinned softly and gave him a quick kiss, leaving Eunhan-i flustered…

Show 241 more in thread

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EggAccount @eggforyoushithanjem

HanJem shippers making content out of another pairing’s moment have no pride~

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EggEggAccount @eyeforeyeeggforegg

HyungJem shippers making the member they used to beat up into a bottom shuttle have neither pride nor conscience~

To make matters worse, since the broadcast was near its end, the communities were plastered solely with Woohyeong’s statement.

[4ever Radio Discussion Thread! (Comments 999+)]

• Anonymous 873: As expected of a group that blew up through RPS lol

• Anonymous 874: Said it a hundred times, they blew up through Jeong Woohyeong’s fancam

• Anonymous 875: Isn’t Jeong Woohyeong damn careless? Saying an idol’s drinking habit is kissing, how easy is that for haters to speculate? Isn’t he crazy? Honestly, I don’t get why he acts like that to his own member lol

• Anonymous 876: He explicitly said kissing men, so what does it matter?

• Anonymous 877: Anon 875 HanJem shipper auntie…, your jealousy is ugly tsk tsk

Fans with similar stanning tendencies tended to gather in one place.

Across numerous fan sites, people were stanning 4ever in various ways.

All those many fans were engaged in a heated debate over Woohyeong’s statement.

Anon (IP: 112.175)

What’s with that bastard Jeong Woohyeong’s BGP? Unwanted supply is crazy

Anon (IP: 223.62)

Is that BGP? Is there any bastard who does BGP with a face like he ate shit lol

If the person who made that statement had been Eunhan, the fandom would have been in a festival mood.

However, since the person who spoke about Jemin’s drinking habit was Woohyeong, whose sub-fandoms were usually on bad terms, the atmosphere was grim.

• You crazy bastards, don’t do this on the radio message board, the members and muggles are all watching, what kind of mess is this?

Jemin could feel the chill just by taking a quick glance at the fan reactions on the radio message board.

He pledged to take a stunning selfie when leaving work to appease their anger.

“Is Jemin-hyung’s drinking habit really that?”

While the music played, Eunhan asked Woohyeong out of curiosity.

It was a question purely for fact-checking, without any intention of teasing or mocking.

“No.

It was throwing up.”

“It’s neither!”

Although no one expected it, Woohyeong’s statement this time led to an unexpected trend.

A new faction had formed within the fandom.

• But… isn’t HyungJem kind of delicious? lol | Upvotes 129 Downvotes 1421

  └ Jem-bottom stans leave, Jeong Woohyeong fans boycott HyungJem | Upvotes 901 Downvotes 485

  └ If I were to ship Jem as a bottom, I’d ship HanJem, why would I ship HyungJem? Don’t troll | Upvotes 1400 Downvotes 89

  └ Jeong Woohyeong RPS only accepts self-ship | Upvotes 1187 Downvotes 52

Even though it was a taste that got beaten up by both sides.

“Jeong Woohyeong!”

“Jemin-ah! Kyah!”

“Seo Eunhan! Take responsibility!”

“Huh? For what?”

She’s just saying that, Eunhan.

Jemin guided Eunhan, who was scratching his head at the fan’s desperate cry to take responsibility, as they walked.

“Heol, did you see HanJem happen just now?”

“Did you take a picture?”

“Yeah.

Awesome.”

Thanks to the chart reversal, they began doing music shows again with their follow-up track.

When they were promoting their title track, no one held a camera to 4ever even if they arrived at the music show.

People had only glanced and reacted with “Who’s that?”, but in just one month, the situation had completely changed.

“Don’t crowd us, you crazy bastards!”

Because too many people gathered, walking was difficult.

In the midst of that, because of people shoving cameras to take photos of 4ever, a loud continuous shutter sound rang out.

With only one manager hyung as security personnel, it was a close call.

“Jemin-ah! Yu Jemin!”

Perhaps due to the desire to see the members closer.

There were signs of fans trying to cross the line they shouldn’t cross.

It was the moment when an arm suddenly popped out and almost grabbed Jemin’s hair.

“Don’t come close.”

When a guy who already looked scary spoke with a stern face, the fans took a step back.

Woohyeong had simply conveyed the message not to come close, but a few fans seemed to feel embarrassed.

• Jeong Woohyeong’s fan-hatred on the way to work is insane

• In the first place, it’s because you guys crowded around without common sense

• So damn annoying, Q2P CEO, even you come out and guard them, does this make sense?

“Eternitys! Thank you for coming early in the morning~ Please look forward to today’s stage!”

Right now, the crowded people were all Eternitys, 4ever’s fans.

4ever was second to last in the line-up ending.

Unlike before, they decided to do a pre-recording and accepted applications for participation.

“It accepted 200 people, and it filled up in 1 minute, insane.”

Jemin pretended to be a fan and applied to check their firepower, but clicking 1 minute late resulted in an instant failure.

Since only the fandom name was decided and paid fan club members hadn’t been recruited yet, anyone could apply, making the competition fierce.

Considering that they couldn’t even fill 100 people at the recent fan-sign event, it was a remarkable growth.

“It’s a weekday, so I didn’t know so many fans would come.”

Even though they couldn’t make it into the 200 people who could participate in the pre-recording, the place was crowded with people who came to see them on their way to work.

Jemin kept looking back at the unbelievable sight.

Every time Jemin turned around, screams from the fans could be heard.

Even while entering the broadcasting station, Jemin waved his hand until the very end.

“Do you know? They say we are a strong candidate for 1st place today!”

The chart ranking of the follow-up track also rose a lot, and the view count of the music video roughly cobbled together with various clips wasn’t bad either.

Although it hadn’t started yet, even if they received text votes, it would be a favorable situation.

Even though he didn’t expect them to reach being a 1st place candidate.

“Really?”

At Eunhan’s words, James subtly seemed to expect 1st place.

However, whether Yoonbin didn’t want to plant false hope, he said firmly.

“But PPP seniors made a comeback last week, so we won’t be able to win 1st place.”

“Just being nominated is something to be thankful for.”

“Right.

Originally, our music ranking was four digits.”

Instead of a sloppy waiting room like before, they were assigned a proper, exclusive waiting room.

Looking at the paper written [Waiting Room for Performers: 4ever] in front of the door, they were soaked in emotion.

“Come to think of it, our promotions overlap with PPP seniors.”

Jemin said while looking over today’s performer list.

Jemin usually monitored other idols a lot, but he was so busy lately that he had forgotten PPP made a comeback.

“Was he your role model?”

Since he didn’t expect Woohyeong to remember the interview content, Jemin looked at Woohyeong with surprised eyes.

“That guy is kind of trash.”

Woohyeong spoke with an annoyed expression.

At Woohyeong’s words, Jemin’s face turned pale.

“Why? Was there some kind of controversy?”

It was out of anxiety that he might have named him as a role model despite a controversy he didn’t know about.

Woohyeong looked straight at Jemin and answered shamelessly.

“Just because his physiognomy is bad.”

It was so ridiculous that laughter didn’t even come out.

“What are you, a face reader?”

Ryu Seong was an undeniable popular member of Korea’s top idol group, PPP.

Since he was a member without a single controversy so far, Jemin thought Ryu Seong was worthy of being named a role model publicly.

He couldn’t understand why Woohyeong found Ryu Seong unsatisfactory for the sole reason that his face reading was bad.

“Whether his face reading is bad or not, you know we have to do a round of greetings to our seniors, right?”

Instantly, an unexplainable anxiety washed over him, but Jemin shook his head with the thought of ‘Ah, no way’.

‘Even if he’s a guy who can’t do fan service, he should be good at social life.’

The members packed signed CDs to hand out when greeting their seniors.

Among them, not a single member anticipated the situation that was about to unfold in the future.